Promoting health and wellbeing in the workplace: useful tips for employers

Promoting health and wellbeing in the workplace can be an important step towards building a more robust and productive workforce, and reducing sickness absence within your small business.

Let’s take a look at how you can promote health and wellbeing in the workplace as a small business owner.

Understanding workplace health and wellbeing

When it comes to workplace health and wellbeing, there are various contributing factors to consider, including:

• Physical health and wellbeing
• Mental, emotional and psychological health and wellbeing
• Safe working environments
• Attitudes towards work such as how many days spent in the office and how often an employee undertakes work out of hours.
• The attitudes of others including peers, management, and the organisation as a whole
• The opportunities for self-development, both job-related and personal

Creating a health and wellbeing strategy

Promoting health and wellbeing in the workplace is becoming a priority for chief HR officers and HR departments. If you’re thinking about implementing wellbeing programmes at your business, you may be wondering about how to get started. These tips will help you form and plan your strategy:

Assess your current workplace conditions

First things first, you need to assess your current workplace conditions and establish what’s working and what needs improvement. This includes any policies you currently have in place, such as flexible working and childcare support.

To gain a clear understanding you need to speak to your staff. Create a safe and confidential environment for staff to raise any concerns surrounding their wellbeing in the workplace, and find out exactly what it is they want.

For example, there’s no point in implementing a childcare support scheme if none of your employees even have children. Any wellbeing initiatives you introduce need to be personalised to your staff and their needs.

Set clear objectives

Determine exactly what it is that you want any new wellbeing programmes to achieve. Do you want to create happier and healthier employees? Do you want to boost staff morale? Does your organisation need to work on staff communication? Is there a problem with productivity?

Whatever it is, be clear on your objectives from the outset and ensure anything you implement aligns with these goals.

Be open to feedback

The key to a successful workplace wellbeing programme is to be open to feedback from your employees.

Remember, anything you implement is to benefit them and the organisation as a whole, so you need to be willing to listen to their feedback and implement changes where necessary.

Key elements of a strong health and wellbeing strategy

So what exactly should you be implementing as part of a workplace health and wellbeing strategy?

Flexible working

In such a hyper-connected world, there are fewer reasons than ever for employees to be chained to their desks five days a week.

If it suits your business operations, flexible working can be a great way to boost staff wellbeing. It offers a better work/life balance, and is a particular perk for those with difficult childcare or travel arrangements.

Not all staff work best in an office environment, which is why a flexible policy that allows them to work from anywhere can give a huge boost to their overall wellbeing, in turn helping them improve their productivity.

Access to support

Providing your staff with access to healthcare and wellbeing support can go a long way to making them feel valued, and creating a happier and healthier workforce and boosting morale.

Private medical, dental and optical care are all things that you can consider, as well as setting up access for staff to receive free mental health and emotional support – for example, via an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) or Mental Health First Aiders.

Often, organisations will offer this as part of a salary sacrifice scheme or as one of the additional perks that come with the job.

Encouragement of passions

While employers hope their staff are passionate about their work, we all know that employees will have hobbies and interests outside of the industry they work in.

You can offer staff the time and opportunity to explore these passions by setting up clubs, groups and events such as lunchtime yoga, after-work run clubs, or a monthly book club.

This will help staff to feel like they have time to explore passions outside of their work and that you value them as a whole person, not just for their work-related skills.

If appropriate you can even offer staff the chance to take sabbatical leave – something many UK companies are offering. This can help them to explore personal goals and passions before returning to their role.

Special events

There are various events that you can host for your staff that will help boost wellbeing, and act as great team-building exercises too.

Some ideas include:

• Sports days
• Yoga sessions
• Meditation sessions
• Bring your pet to work day
• Healthy food stations
• Cooking classes
• Arts and craft classes

Tips for implementing a health and wellbeing strategy

Our top tips for implementing a health and wellbeing strategy in the workplace are:

• Elect staff champions to lead on wellbeing programmes. While your policies are likely to be overseen by your HR team, getting your employees involved with coming up with new ideas, managing events, communicating about initiatives, and gathering staff feedback can help things run smoothly and prompt employee buy-in.

• Work with partners. You probably won’t be able to execute every aspect of your strategy yourself, so try to find partners that align with your business goals to help, such as a private medical provider or a yoga practitioner.

• Communicate with your staff. Make sure your employees know what wellbeing support is available to them and be clear about the messages you want to promote to your staff.

• Resist the urge to preach. Wellbeing is a personal journey and not every team member will want to make use of every policy you implement. If a team member doesn’t want to attend an after-work yoga session, for example, don’t force them. Wellbeing programmes should be voluntary and open for all.

Read more: how to conduct a return-to-work interview when an employee returns from long-term absence

Final thoughts on promoting health and wellbeing in the workplace

The right wellbeing strategies will depend on your business and the needs of your individual employees.

Remember, anything you implement is for the benefit of your team, so try to put aside your own desires and work with your employees to introduce policies and ideas that they genuinely want.

Be open to feedback and monitor staff uptake of anything you introduce to see how well your new wellbeing protocols are working.

Sometimes it can be trial and error, but once you find what works for your staff, you will be well on your way to a happier and healthier workforce who are more productive, more likely to stay with your organisation, and less likely to need sick leave.

Lucy Nixon - content writer

With 10 years experience in the digital marketing industry, Lucy is a content writer specialising in ecommerce, website building and all things small business. Her passion is breaking down tricky topics into digestible and engaging content for readers. She's also committed to uncovering the best platforms, tools, and strategies, researching meticulously to providing hand-on tips and advice.